


Hear me roar

by issen4



Category: HIStory 3: 圈套 | HIStory 3: Trapped, HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trap
Genre: Female-Centric, Gen, Strong Female Characters, Tang Guo Dong the adoptive father, being orphaned, terrible childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 17:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/issen4/pseuds/issen4
Summary: My take on Hong Ye.





	Hear me roar

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write about the boys and ended up with this instead.
> 
> Warning for reference to terrible, neglectful childhood and being orphaned.

Part I

She was six when she ran away from home for the first time. If asked, she would not have been able to explain why, even to herself (besides, she was non-verbal until she was eight). No one was supposed to care. No one spoke to her except the random neighbour passing outside their door. The police, who found her, fed her treats and milk, but handed her back to the tall woman who silently grabbed her arm, half-dragging her all the way back, and locked her in the toilet for two days while she left the house for goodness knows where.

She kept running away, but she didn't know enough then to find another place to go to, so she ended up wondering in circles around her neighbourhood, hiding from the police. But she was too conspicuous in the small community so they found her every time and called the tall woman to come get her. The tall woman, whom Hong Ye slowly realised was the person everyone referred to as her 'mother', never hit her. She never touched Hong Ye more than she had to, either, as though Hong Ye was covered in razors and would end up drawing her blood. In fact, she ignored Hong Ye as thoroughly as though Hong Ye was wearing an invisibility cloak.

Until she met Tang Yi, she'd never known anyone who understood how that felt.

The tall woman had to put her in school finally; the police and a nice, distressed lady carrying a file came to talk to the tall woman, and finally Hong Ye (who realised she was called Zuo Hong Ye) was walked to school every day by the nice, distressed lady. The other children (there were other children!) didn't like her, so she pushed them all and stepped on their shoes and scribbled on their bags. The 'lessons' were laughably easy, after Hong Ye got the hang of books. She topped the year, until the children's parents complained that it was because she was older than all the other children in her class.

When she was ten, the social worker (the nice, distressed lady) brought her to a hospital, where she met a thin, yellowed man (even his eyeballs were yellow) who hugged her. It was the first hug she could remember getting. She could see the name-plate over his bed. His surname was Zuo, too. "Are you my father?" she demanded then, and remembered how he started crying and saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again.

Within days, her father was dead.

Rather than go back to the tall woman (her mother), Hong Ye made her plans and ran away again. This time, no one found her. 

She always insisted that she found Tang Yi first.

Life with Tang Yi (he wasn't called Tang Yi then) was the most memorable part of her life, the first time she knew a life that was not made up of invisibility. It was not always good: they went hungry often, and Tang Yi got into fights that left him bruised, when he was being protective. They ran for their lives more often than not, begged for food outside foodstalls at closing time, and tried not to steal. They ran errands for gangsters and hooligans on the streets; sometimes they even got paid.

She didn't realise people like Tang-ye were real. Adults just didn't take you in, asking nothing more than that you trust them to care for you. They didn't want to harm her; she was careful, and always locked the bedroom door unless Tang Yi was with her, but it seemed all they wanted was for her and Tang Yi to live together with Tang-ye, like a family.

She was sixteen when she realised this was it: this was her family. Tang-ye had brought in tutors for her and Tang Yi, because she refused to go to school. Tang-ye was thinking about cleaning up Xing Tian Meng, even starting legal businesses for Xing Tian Meng's brothers. She said, she would help. Even Tang Yi was surprised. But she went on, she would go to university, study about what was needed to help Xing Tian Meng, to help Tang-ye. Tang Yi said the same, and so she knew that they would always be a family, together.

She was in her last year of university when she got the news: Tang-ye dead and Tang Yi in hospital, in a coma. Immediately she came back to Xing Tian Meng. By dint of being 'Xiao-jie' (everyone knew the young miss of Xing Tian Meng), she handled the funeral, dealt with the police and corralled the parts of the Xing Tian Meng that were for taking revenge, taking wild action, and taking the law into their own hands. Still in the throes of grief and anger, they listened to her only reluctantly. But at least they listened. Gu Dao Yi helped.

He had come to fetch her from campus, and that was when she finally noticed him as a man. He was seldom around when she was younger; Tang-ye had sent him to handle the rowdier parts of Xing Tian Meng that were outside Taipei but Tang-ye and Tang Yi both trusted him. He was quiet and more diffident than she remembered, even in the midst of grieving for Tang-ye.

She liked how easily Dao Yi worked with her. Once Tang Yi woke up from his coma (thank goodness he woke up) and began taking over Xing Tian Meng in earnest, she took over Shi Hai Trading and turned it into Shi Hai Group.

Her, a twenty-two year old college dropout. But her advantage was that she was 'Xiao-jie', the men trusted her and Tang Yi supported her. Dao Yi soon came over as her assistant, and if there were any sceptics about her, they were soon silenced. They bought a warehouse. Then another. She travelled to Taizhong and Tainan and Kaohsiung and all the parts of Taiwan where Xing Tian Meng and Shi Hai Group had activities. They took over three entire floors of the newest office building in Taipei. More and more trips to Hainan and Hong Kong and Shenzhen and Shanghai. Soon people started to forget Shi Hai's origins.

Tang Yi had the tougher job of herding cats. Those that had left Xing Tian Meng for Shi Hai Group were content – no, eager – to leave their pasts behind, and to learn the ways of doing business the legal way. Those still in Xing Tian Meng wore their gangster identity like a badge of honour, insisting that the old ways were the best. Tang Yi introduced, cajoled without seeming obvious about it, and enabled them to run businesses on a smaller scale: mobile phone shops; nightclubs; eateries; bubble-tea outlets; coffee shops; car and motorcycle workshops; even his current project, a men's tailor shop. All to re-direct their energies towards lawful activities, away from the drug dealing that had caused Tang-ye's death. 

She was lonely, and so was Tang Yi.

It was not the cold, white otherness of her childhood (nor Tang Yi's) at least. They were both so busy, and so preoccupied. They had set out too young, too soon, to fulfil Tang-ye's vision. Tang Yi, she knew, still had unspoken plans for avenging Tang-ye. Not that she was against it, but she feared that those plans would end up destroying Tang Yi.

/tbc


End file.
